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> Governments have never solved many problems at all—-homelessness comes to mind North Korean dissidents in South Korea disagree strongly with your claim: seve

> Governments have never solved many problems at all—-homelessness comes to mind North Korean dissidents in South Korea disagree strongly with your claim: several of them publicly expressed their shame to see such a rich country failing to fulfill this very basic human need when their super poor communist country of origin had no such problem. Homelessness is a society-wide self-inflected wound: it could be stopped in a few years, but that would be landlord gentry's biggest nightmare.

insickness 3y ago
Citing a totalitarian government as the solution to homelessness supports the original commenter's claim rather than detracts from it.
- littlestymaar 3y ago
  If a totalitarian state that doesn't care about its people at all and cannot even manage to properly feed its population can do it, then surely the biggest economy in the world can do it too.
  - insickness 3y ago
    The true conditions of poverty in North Korea are shrouded in secrecy, with reports of famine, starvation, and human rights violations. The extent of homelessness is unknown, but defectors' stories don't paint a good picture. Homelessness affects children ("Kotjebi") and elderly individuals, often abandoned due to an inability to support them. The government denies their existence, and homeless individuals are rounded up, their destination unknown. https://borgenproject.org/homelessness-in-north-korea/ https://borgenproject.org/homelessness-in-north-korea/
moring 3y ago
> Homelessness is a society-wide self-inflected wound: it could be stopped in a few years, but that would be landlord gentry's biggest nightmare. I think you are making the same mistake as the author of the article. Can you describe the steps necessary to solve homelessness, without resorting to "steps" that simply describe a condition that won't be fulfilled, such as "people have to..." or "the government has to..."? Or, in other words, let's assume that I want to solve homelessness. What do I have to do for that?
- imtringued 3y ago
  You would need to introduce an equilibrium encouraging money system and prevent the extraction of land rents. Those things are never going to happen, because they are too obvious of a solution. The current money system heavily discourages equilibrium formation, which allows disequilibria like the geographical concentration of money to occur, which in turn make it harder to earn money outside of large city hubs with expensive real estate. It is not possible for these homeless people to move away and earn a living on their own, because it would mean distancing themselves from where the jobs are moving towards. However, even if you make jobs available outside of expensive locations, there are still going to be people who need to live in the expensive location for whatever non job related reason. Those still need a solution to densify the existing location so more people can live there. That is why you need to prevent land owners from extracting benefits created by the collective surrounded the plot of land. Again, the solution is too obvious for anyone to care about it. We can't demonize people, we can only demonize their ability to do bad things and set the incentives up in such a way that "greedy" people and "morally good" people do the same thing. If you wanted the same answer in short: Demurrage currencies and land value taxes. Too simple to be believable.
  - moring 3y ago
    > You would need to introduce an equilibrium encouraging money system and prevent the extraction of land rents. Those things are never going to happen, because they are too obvious of a solution. If these two action items are "never going to happen", as you say, then they are not (part of) a solution. Like the author of the article, you have just started mapping the problem. > If you wanted the same answer in short: Demurrage currencies and land value taxes. Too simple to be believable. If things are as simple as you claim, why don't you describe a plan to overcome the obstacles and actually implement the two changes you described?
    - Draiken 3y ago
      This is such a lazy argument. You can't write out in this moment how to solve this <insert large problem here> therefore it's too complex to solve. It's all about incentives. Our society is incentivized to make a few people rich, not to solve these sorts of problems. If we wanted to solve them, we would. But that's not profitable, so it's not "worth" it. Humans never had the technological capabilities we have today, which could solve most, if not all, of these problems. But because of our current economic system we rather spend trillions on advertising instead of reducing human suffering. It's sad to realize that, unlike any other time in history, we as a society choose to not solve these issues.

insickness 3y ago

Citing a totalitarian government as the solution to homelessness supports the original commenter's claim rather than detracts from it.

littlestymaar 3y ago
If a totalitarian state that doesn't care about its people at all and cannot even manage to properly feed its population can do it, then surely the biggest economy in the world can do it too.
- insickness 3y ago
  The true conditions of poverty in North Korea are shrouded in secrecy, with reports of famine, starvation, and human rights violations. The extent of homelessness is unknown, but defectors' stories don't paint a good picture. Homelessness affects children ("Kotjebi") and elderly individuals, often abandoned due to an inability to support them. The government denies their existence, and homeless individuals are rounded up, their destination unknown. https://borgenproject.org/homelessness-in-north-korea/ https://borgenproject.org/homelessness-in-north-korea/

moring 3y ago

> Homelessness is a society-wide self-inflected wound: it could be stopped in a few years, but that would be landlord gentry's biggest nightmare. I think you are making the same mistake as the author of the article. Can you describe the steps necessary to solve homelessness, without resorting to "steps" that simply describe a condition that won't be fulfilled, such as "people have to..." or "the government has to..."? Or, in other words, let's assume that I want to solve homelessness. What do I have to do for that?

imtringued 3y ago
You would need to introduce an equilibrium encouraging money system and prevent the extraction of land rents. Those things are never going to happen, because they are too obvious of a solution. The current money system heavily discourages equilibrium formation, which allows disequilibria like the geographical concentration of money to occur, which in turn make it harder to earn money outside of large city hubs with expensive real estate. It is not possible for these homeless people to move away and earn a living on their own, because it would mean distancing themselves from where the jobs are moving towards. However, even if you make jobs available outside of expensive locations, there are still going to be people who need to live in the expensive location for whatever non job related reason. Those still need a solution to densify the existing location so more people can live there. That is why you need to prevent land owners from extracting benefits created by the collective surrounded the plot of land. Again, the solution is too obvious for anyone to care about it. We can't demonize people, we can only demonize their ability to do bad things and set the incentives up in such a way that "greedy" people and "morally good" people do the same thing. If you wanted the same answer in short: Demurrage currencies and land value taxes. Too simple to be believable.
- moring 3y ago
  > You would need to introduce an equilibrium encouraging money system and prevent the extraction of land rents. Those things are never going to happen, because they are too obvious of a solution. If these two action items are "never going to happen", as you say, then they are not (part of) a solution. Like the author of the article, you have just started mapping the problem. > If you wanted the same answer in short: Demurrage currencies and land value taxes. Too simple to be believable. If things are as simple as you claim, why don't you describe a plan to overcome the obstacles and actually implement the two changes you described?
  - Draiken 3y ago
    This is such a lazy argument. You can't write out in this moment how to solve this <insert large problem here> therefore it's too complex to solve. It's all about incentives. Our society is incentivized to make a few people rich, not to solve these sorts of problems. If we wanted to solve them, we would. But that's not profitable, so it's not "worth" it. Humans never had the technological capabilities we have today, which could solve most, if not all, of these problems. But because of our current economic system we rather spend trillions on advertising instead of reducing human suffering. It's sad to realize that, unlike any other time in history, we as a society choose to not solve these issues.